Ant foragers might present variation and universal property in their movements
Ant foragers might present variation and universal property in their movements
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蚂蚁觅食者的运动可能呈现出变异性和普遍性
DOI：
10.1007/s00359-021-01484-4
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Fujisawa Ryusuke
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Sakiyama Tomoko;Nagaya Naohisa;Fujisawa Ryusuke
研究动物的运动机制可以提高我们对其固有运动和对外部刺激的反应的理解。此外，识别动物的运动模式可以揭示它们的觅食搜索效率。觅食蚂蚁的导航机制已得到深入研究；他们提出了典型的搜索策略来确定他们的目标。然而，蚂蚁的详细运动模式及其探索行为的特性尚未得到充分研究，这可能是因为在有限的平坦场地上研究蚂蚁（它们倾向于沿着墙壁行走并停止在拐角处移动）固有的困难。在这里，我们使用球形跑步机系统（ANTAM）来解决这个问题，并使用该系统来研究日本木蚁运动的扩散性。在跑步机上，蚂蚁们不受任何限制地长距离行走。我们发现，运动的扩散程度因人而异，并且取决于时间。有趣的是，进一步的分析表明，即使个体显然产生了不同类型的轨迹，个体步行者的旅行路径的演变也表现出粉红噪声。这种复杂的路径可能与优化的搜索策略有关，因为蚂蚁会不可预测地产生小路径和长路径。
Investigating the locomotion mechanisms of animals improves our understanding of both their inherent movements and responses to external stimuli. Moreover, identifying the movement patterns of animals reveals their foraging search efficiency. The navigational mechanisms of foraging ants have been well studied; they present typical search strategies for pinpointing their goal. However, the detailed movement patterns of ants and the properties of their exploratory behaviors have yet to be fully studied, perhaps because of the inherent difficulty in investigating ants on a restricted flat field (on which they tend to walk along walls and stop moving around corners). Here, we address this problem using a spherical treadmill system (ANTAM), and we use this system to investigate the diffusiveness of Japanese wood ants’ movements. On the treadmill, the ants walked over long distances without any restrictions. We found that the diffusiveness of movements varied across individuals and depended on time. Interestingly, further analysis indicated that the evolution of individual walkers’ travel paths exhibited pink noise, even if individuals apparently produced different types of trajectories. Such complex paths may be related to optimized search strategies since ants produced both small and long paths unpredictably.